Three patrol boats from Spain and Italy were heading towards Senegal on Thursday to try to stop vessels bringing migrants into Europe via the Canary Islands. The boats, which will team up with three Senegalese patrol vessels, are moving into place along the African coastline as Spanish authorities report that as many migrants have reached the Canary Islands in August as in the whole of last year.

As the sympathetic examiner handed me my Mensa IQ test results, I had a sense of how the Pakistani cricket team must feel about Aussie umpire Darrell Hair. The difference, of course, was that the examiner wasn’t the stupid one. A few days earlier I had attended a local get-together of this international organisation for people with an IQ in the top 2% of the population, writes Charles Leonard.

What started weeks ago with Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists occupying the Human Rights Commission offices in Cape Town may end with the pressure group taking President Thabo Mbeki to court in an attempt to get Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang fired. The lobby group says there are several legal avenues that could be explored if the president were to be brought before the court.

This week will see the climax of Jacob Zuma and the Thint group’s bid to have the graft case against them thrown out. Both claim their right to a fair trial has been irreparably compromised. Thint’s case — based on an agreement between it and then prosecutions chief Bulelani Ngcuka in April 2004 — is probably stronger.

The body of United Independent Front (UIF) leader Malizolo Diko had barely grown cold when his party colleagues were at one another’s throats over who should succeed him. UIF national executive committee member Mzwandile Manjiya has approached the Cape High Court in a bid to stop anyone being appointed to Diko’s parliamentary seat, vacant since his death.

United States President George Bush demanded that there be ”consequences” for Iran after it ignored a United Nations Security Council deadline on Thursday to suspend part of its nuclear programme. Washington wants UN sanctions imposed on Tehran as quickly as possible, but the Security Council is seriously divided.